The magnificent old-growth forests of the Upper Great Lakes, ripped out a century ago to build cities like Chicago, are coming back. But alongside them grows a controversy over how best to use them.
A restless lumber and logging industry, all but thrown out of the Pacific Northwest and reaching the limits of expansion in the South, is eyeing the swelling stands of trees in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, which have the Midwest’s largest tracts of forestland. When companies look at those trees, they see a feedstock for new mills.
They are being encouraged to think that way by the region’s state governments, whose economic development and natural resources departments are eagerly trying to bring in more paper and lumber companies for their jobs and taxes. “The public policy goal is to create good-paying jobs for citizens,” said Robin Bertsch, a forester with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“The question is always asked of existing companies: Do you have a long-term supply of timber? The answer is yes. Industry and companies from out of state say there is room for more. There’s avid interest from out of state.”
Environmentalists, on the other hand, want more acres set aside for forests to evolve naturally, so that, over time, they can return to an environment resembling what existed at the time of the first white settlements. Such forests, they argue, are equally capable of generating jobs in what is called eco-tourism: camping, backpacking and other outdoor pursuits.
In many areas of the Upper Midwest forests, this natural evolution is under way. For several decades, tree growth in the region–both in terms of acreage and, more important, the size of trees on the land–has surpassed the timber industry harvest.
Of course, a significant portion of upper Midwestern land is being used by the paper and lumber industries, which are major employers in the region. Contract loggers periodically harvest forests of aspen and jack pine, which are short-living, fast-growing trees that thrive on bare land and after about 40 or 50 years can be clear-cut to make paper pulp, particleboard and industrial lumber.
But in a number of areas, these stands are giving way to lush hardwoods like maple and oak. In some stands, the magnificent white pines that once thrived in the region–living up to 300 years and rising 150 feet above the forest floor–are reappearing.
For environmentalists, this rejuvenation of forestland provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore the areas to what they see as their natural environment. “For the first time in our history, we can decide what kind of forest we’re going to have,” said Ann Woiwode, head of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club.
The realization that the vast forestlands of the Upper Midwest were maturing has dawned gradually during the 1990s. The U.S. Forest Service conducts surveys every 10 to 15 years of forest resources in each region.
The results have become a bible for industry and state officials seeking to attract more forest-based business to the region. In Minnesota, the amount of forested land increased 8.2 percent between 1977 and 1990. The volume of trees increased 34 percent.
Michigan’s survey, released in 1993, showed the acreage covered with trees rose 7 percent and the volume of trees rose fully 35 percent. Wisconsin is expected to show similar results when its survey is released in July.
“The acreage hasn’t increased a heck of a lot, but the trees are getting bigger and bigger,” said Neal Kingsley, project leader of the forest inventory and analysis for the U.S. Forest Service’s North Central station in St. Paul.
So state and federal managers of much of this wilderness are confronted by two competing visions for its future: Should it be turned into tree farms to feed a paper- and plywood-hungry nation? Or should it be allowed to return to pristine wilderness?
At the Loggers restaurant in West Branch, 30 miles southeast of Roscommon, the walls are lined with fading black-and-white photos of the men who chopped down the original forests. One shows a bunkhouse filled with Bunyonesque workingmen; another shows two loggers sawing away at a mammoth white pine, perched on scaffolds on either side of the eight-foot diameter tree.
By about 1910, the big trees were gone. Now, the only reminders of that era are the huge stumps dotting the landscape. The big timber exhausted, the logging companies moved on to places that still had big trees: the South and the Pacific Northwest.
Soon, fires ravaged the region, feeding on the residue of the tall trees that littered the landscape. Chicagoans remember the Great Fire of 1871 that led to their city’s rebirth as a great metropolis. Overshadowed was the huge fire in Peshtigo, Wis., that was started the same day. It killed nearly 1,200 loggers, farmers and their families–four times as many people as died in Chicago.
The intense fires burned away topsoil in many areas; in others, it exposed sandy soil that is ideal for pines but not much good for anything else. Still, land-hungry farmers rushed in to make a go of it. They finally were swept away by the falling commodity prices of the Great Depression, and the land reverted to government ownership for non-payment of taxes.
Today, state governments are the single biggest owner of forests in the three states, with about 20 percent of the land. The federal government owns and manages another 10 percent.
The bulk of the forests are owned privately, usually by individuals. The average plot in Michigan, for instance, is about 25 acres, often in the hands of city-dwellers who own a second home in the great north woods.
Industry owns less than 6 percent of the land. It relies on auctions on public lands for most of its raw material.
Indeed, it was the government that came to the forests’ rescue after the depredations of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps sent thousands of unemployed city workers into the forests, replanting the bare land with red pine seedlings. Forty or 50 years later, those trees became big enough to harvest and replant. Elsewhere, the space grew over with aspen and jack pine, which grow quickly in the open sunlight of bare land.
The region’s paper, pulp and lumber industries grew steadily, based on these trees. Today, 34 wood pulp and 13 particleboard mills operate in the three states.
More mills are likely. Nationwide, average timber harvests have increased steadily since the end of World War II, and rose 2 percent a year on average from the mid-1980s to early 1990s.
And harvest levels are starting to catch up with growth levels. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, growth in the forests exceeded the harvest by 54 percent in 1976, 38 percent in 1986 and 33 percent in 1991. But most of this change can be attributed to Southern states, which remain the nation’s dominant timber and pulp-producing region, with 55 percent of the harvest.
In the South, growth exceeds the harvest by only 10 percent. In the Pacific Northwest, dogged by the spotted owl controversy, hundreds of thousands of acres of old-growth forests are out of production. The wood industry already is turning to imports from Latin American and Southeast Asia to meet its ever-expanding demand.
“The Lake States offer a very attractive opportunity from any objective standpoint,” said John Heissenbuttel, senior policy director at the American Forest and Paper Association, the industry’s main trade group. He projects U.S. demand to grow by half over the next 50 years; the United Nations expects global demand to double in the same period.
“Local environmentalists, who are often myopic, have to wrestle with this problem,” he said. “If we’re forcing part of the demand to be met offshore that used to be met on the Pacific Coast or elsewhere in the U.S., where will those logs come from? We have the toughest environmental laws in the world and the most enlightened forest management. Isn’t it better that we produce the logs and paper here?” he asks.
Jack Pilon, a 44-year-old marketing specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, agrees. Recently, he drove his pickup into the backwoods near Roscommon. As he passed over a small rise, the uniform stand of aspen saplings on land clear-cut two decades ago gave way suddenly to lush woods, thick with trees of remarkable variety: white ash, sugar maples, red maples, basswoods and beech. Many soared to 70 and 80 feet.
A hundred years ago, the loggers clear-cut the hardwoods on this stand. Aspen grew back quickly, but weren’t harvested. Under their canopy, shade-tolerant species thrived. Now they overshadow the aspens, which are dying a natural death.
“If nothing is done, these trees will thin themselves naturally,” Pilon said, eyeing a competing pair of 12-inch diameter maples whose trunks were less than 10 feet apart. “Only the best trees through natural selection will grow into big trees.
“We can do the same thing,” he said, “but by getting products out of it.”
Some environmentalists balk at this kind of industrial thinning. Trees falling through natural selection create homes for small mammals, and food for rare species of birds and insects.
Meanwhile, pressure mounts from the mill owners to increase the cut on state-owned lands, especially in the 50- and 60-year-old aspen forests that if left untouched will re-emerge as either hardwood or pine forests.
“Sure, we’d like to see an increase in harvesting,” said Peter Grieves, executive director of the Michigan Association of Timbermen. “These forests are growing older and they need to have this done to nurture new stands for the long-term. Without clear-cutting, there will be a decline in the output of the aspen and jack pine over time.”
